


Crossed out carpe diem

by henriqua



Series: STAINED SOULS [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Minor Character Death, Recreational Drug Use, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking, rape scene outside the pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 02:06:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12546408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henriqua/pseuds/henriqua
Summary: The one about Keiji,Bokuto (and Bokuto's first name),blood,gold and copper,cold floors,filth,cars,and things that can only happen underneath the stars.





	Crossed out carpe diem

**Author's Note:**

> After seven months, it's finally here: the second part of stained souls. Unfortunately it doesn't give answers to the many questions you might have after reading the first part (except for one), and it probably just gives you more questions. I still promise that all of them will be answered, sooner or later.
> 
> I'm excited to let you all read this, especially because it's my first time properly writing Akaashi and I'm not sure did I do him justice.

Keiji is seventeen years and two weeks old when he lies down on the cold, wet ground of a back road that's rarely used nowadays. He spreads his arms next to him like a cross, takes a deep breath and blinks slowly. The sky above him is dark, clusters of stars barely visible, and when Keiji closes his eyes he can hear absolutely nothing.  
  
It's silent, no screamed arguments or his mother crying after the man who lives with the two of them is done leaving more bruises on her body.  
  
Keiji more feels than hears the approaching car, the roar of its engine shaking the ground he lies on. It doesn't come fast, probably because the road is in terrible condition since no one uses it anymore. Keiji forces his eyes open, his eyelids heavy, and keeps his gaze up at the sky even when the car's headlights eat the darkness around him away.  
  
Keiji isn't sure does he want the driver to notice him and yell at him for blocking the way, or does he want the car to run over him and the driver noticing him when it's already too late. Keiji thinks and thinks, neither of the options being better than the other.  
  
The car stops, and Keiji hears how someone steps out of it and slams the door shut. He flinches at the sudden loud noise and closes his eyes tightly, his hands clenching into fists by pure instinct – Keiji would never be able to hit anyone but he knows how to defend himself, at least in theory. He holds his breath when the driver's heavy, slow steps reach him and stop right next to him.  
  
Keiji opens his eyes and is met with golden irises.  
  
”What are you doing?” It's not an angry question. Keiji notices an interested, almost amused tone in the voice and he can't help scrunching his brows in confusion. The big eyes with sparks of copper in them blink, and there's a smirk in the corners of the stranger's mouth.  
  
”Listening to the silence.”  
  
”Can I join you?” Keiji nods slowly and watches how the stranger with golden eyes lies down next to him, crosses his arms behind his head and stares at the sky. The car's headlights are still on and Keiji can't see the faint stars anymore.  
  
”What are you doing?” Keiji parrots the driver's opening line after a short silence.  
  
”Hiding.”  
  
”Why?”  
  
”The car,” the stranger says and turns his head, flashing a bright smile. Keiji is perplexed, taken aback by the boy next to him he doesn't know but who wants to lie on a cold, wet ground with him.  
  
”What about it?”  
  
”I stole it, and now I have to hide it. I figured it would take some time for someone to come here and find it,” the boy says, his expression changing into an amused one. ”But that wasn't a very good plan – I mean, you were already here and saw me. I guess I need to come up with a plan B.”  
  
Keiji nods, even though he knows the boy can't see it, and lets a silence fall around them. He has never been good with socializing, and small talk only makes him uncomfortable. He sighs and closes his heavy eyelids, his tired eyes thanking him, and after a moment he can hear rustling next to him. The other boy is getting restless and fidgety, and Keiji guesses it's because he's not used to silence and immobility – his eyes looked so alive, so curious, to Keiji.  
  
”What's your name?” The silence is finally broken and Keiji forces his eyes open, turning his head so he can catch a glimpse of the other boy. Big, bright eyes look back at him and for some reason Keiji wants to stop the time just to treasure the moment.  
  
”Keiji,” he answers, and there's a smile on the boy's face, smile that reaches his eyes and seem to make his whole presence glow. ”And yours?”  
  
”Bokuto,” he says and sits up, tips his head back to get a better look of the black, starless sky. The back of his green bomber jacket has gotten dirty.  
  
”And your first name?” Keiji inquires, for some reason wanting to know as much about the other as he knows about him. Bokuto moves his attention to Keiji who still lies on the ground, and smirks.  
  
”I'll tell you when the time's right. Life's no fun without little mysteries.”  
  
+++  
  
Bokuto wears green pants with a pastel-pink sweater, and when Keiji, seventeen years and two and a half months old, stands next to him in a black hoodie and black skinny jeans, a boy Keiji has never seen asks when he plans to grow out of his pathetic emo phase.  
  
People laugh, one of them needing to cover his mouth so he doesn't spit out the expensive alcohol he has in a cheap plastic mug, and Keiji thinks how he accidentally mixed dark and white clothes when he used the washing machine in their small laundry room for the first time.  
  
(He was eleven and trying to clean the house up because his mother was too occupied with crying over her husband who had shot himself after a peaceful family dinner two weeks ago, and Keiji knows the social workers who are coming over don't like a messy house.)  
  
The boy looks down at him, a malicious smirk on his face. Keiji curls into himself, trying his best to make himself smaller, and even though Bokuto's bright and happy presence is right there Keiji doesn't have the right to reach for him, touch him or plead for support because technically they don't even know each other.  
  
Keiji has always had good control over his expressions, he knows he fools people easily because his face reveals nothing, and when he feels Bokuto taking a glance of him he tells himself to stop thinking about needing help. He looks at the boy even though he wants to hide behind Bokuto, and there's something in the boy's eyes, something that makes Keiji cautious yet feel like home.  
  
”You can't see blood in black,” Keiji says, his voice silent and monotonous.  
  
(He remembers how he swiped and swiped and _swiped_ the floor on his knees, wearing his black school uniform pants when he was eleven, and couldn't wash them properly afterwards because he didn't know how to use a washing machine. No one said anything the next day.)  
  
The boy's smirk disappears and Bokuto laughs, loud and amused. ”You're so weird,” he says, putting an arm over Keiji's shoulders. Keiji doesn't know Bokuto and he has no idea how he feels about that kind of proximity, but there's something in the gesture that makes Keiji's chest tighten – he can't tell is it good or bad.  
  
”What was your name again?” the boy asks even though everyone, him included, knows Keiji hasn't introduced himself. The boy's eyes keep throwing Keiji off, something way too familiar and soft in them that Keiji has seen somewhere before.  
  
Bokuto opens his mouth but Keiji beats him. ”Akaashi. You can call me Akaashi,” he says, and Bokuto's warm fingertips touch the side of his neck gently.  
  
+++  
  
Keiji is seventeen years and four months old when he sits on the hood of a car stolen by Bokuto and watches how the new owner of the car downs a disgusting mix of different alcohols, grimacing and swearing he will definitely not lose the next round of the game they're playing. Keiji doesn't laugh at the face Bokuto pulls, but the corners of his mouth quirk up, and he's quick to hide it by taking a sip of his own drink.  
  
Bokuto gets up from the ground and walks to the car, opens one of the doors to get a new drink for the next round. Keiji follows him with his eyes, and when Bokuto slams the door shut and meets his gaze, he smiles widely.  
  
”Why don't you join us? It's fun.”  
  
”You seemed to have a lot of fun losing,” Keiji teases, talking over the rim of his cup. Bokuto chuckles and shrugs, throws an arm around Keiji's shoulders and holds him against his broad chest for a moment. It's warm, it's nice, and Keiji really wants to stay like that for the rest of the night.  
  
But he can't, because Bokuto doesn't see Keiji like that. Bokuto has a lot of love inside him, and he sprinkles it over his friends all the time. Keiji isn't special to him, no matter how many times Bokuto picks him up from school and drive him around the city; no matter how many times Bokuto calls him in the middle of the night to tell him about something cool he just saw or heard; no matter how many times Bokuto drives another stolen car to the place where the two of them met for the first time and sits on the hood of the car next to Keiji, their thighs touching and eyes fixated on the stars above them.  
  
”It's a drinking game, and I'm bad at drinking. You, however, are better. You could win,” Bokuto encourages and gives Keiji a wink after unwrapping his arm around him and opening the bottle in his hand. Keiji shakes his head and huffs out a small laugh.  
  
”If you just tried to give me a compliment, then I have to say you failed miserably.” Bokuto shrugs again and takes a sip of his drink, a warm smile on his lips.  
  
”Bokuto, hey! Stop gossiping with the emo kid and hurry up, we don't have the whole day!” Bokuto waves to his game buddies and starts walking backwards towards them, his golden eyes not leaving Keiji's.  
  
”At least I tried, right?” Another wink, teasing and slightly sloppy because of the alcohol in Bokuto's system, and Keiji gives him a rare smile. Bokuto turns his back to Keiji, but there's an uncomfortable feeling in the nape of Keiji's neck telling him that someone is still staring. He puts his cup down next to him and glances around – there's a lot of people, most of them strangers to him, but he quickly spots a sharp pair of eyes looking at him from the other side of the yard.  
  
Their gazes meet and the boy who gave Keiji the nickname _emo kid_ smiles at him and turns his attention to a friend who's talking to him. There's something in the smile, something toxic and cutting that makes Keiji's windpipe so narrow he has to go inside the car, curl in the corner of the backseat and wrack his brain because he knows there's something familiar in the boy's eyes.  
  
When Bokuto finds Keiji on the backseat of his (stolen) car he doesn't ask questions, only runs his fingertips on the back of Keiji's hand and takes him to his place (because Keiji can't go home to his mother and the man who lives with them, the man would immediately smell the alcohol and smoke on him and the thought alone makes Keiji so, _so_ afraid). Keiji wants to tell Bokuto he shouldn't drive after so many rounds of losing in the drinking game but it's not a long trip, and if Keiji is being honest he isn't surprised that they make it safely.  
  
The small apartment smells safe, it smells like Bokuto and all those long nights they've spent stargazing together in the dark. When Bokuto switches off the lights in his bedroom and makes a bed for himself on the couch, Keiji wants to ask him to share the huge bed with him.  
  
In the end Keiji doesn't open his mouth, because he isn't special.  
  
+++  
  
Keiji is seventeen years and six months old when Bokuto hands him a cigarette he just rolled up himself, a wide and proud smile not faltering even under Keiji’s expressionless stare.  
  
“A gift,” Bokuto says after a moment of silence. He takes Keiji’s hand and gently places the cigarette on his palm. Even though Keiji watched him creating it from white paper and _something_ , he isn’t sure what that _something_ was. He didn’t care to pay attention, because he thought Bokuto was going to smoke it himself.  
  
“For what?”  
  
Bokuto rolls his eyes. “Your grades, dummy.” Keiji blinks and moves his attention to the long, white rollup while Bokuto starts digging through the pockets of his green bomber jacket. He lets out a victorious whoop and pulls out his black-and-white lighter.  
  
Earlier, when Bokuto came to pick Keiji up after school, he had told Bokuto the results of his latest exams. His grades are the best in the whole school.  
  
“I don’t think they’re worth a gift,” Keiji says – and actually means he isn’t sure can a cigarette be called a gift – and Bokuto laughs. It’s loud and slightly obnoxious, and so full of sunlight the dark and chilly car feels suddenly warm.  
  
“Just take it,” Bokuto says, the sun from his laugh sparkling in his eyes. Keiji knows he couldn’t say no even if he wanted.  
  
“I’ve never smoked before,” he confesses, poking the cigarette with his other hand. Bokuto shifts on the driver’s seat, turns so he’s facing Keiji now. He’s smiling, but not in an amused way. It’s more like a soft, encouraging lift of lips, not a hint of judgement or lie in his features.  
  
“That’s alright,” Bokuto says and tentatively clicks the lighter. There’s just sparks at first, but after the third click a slow flame flickers between them. Keiji can see its reflection in Bokuto’s big, excited eyes.  
  
“What did you put in it?” Keiji asks, and Bokuto laughs again. It kills the flame, but another one is already burning somewhere behind Keiji’s ribs (but that can’t be seen, and Bokuto doesn’t know about it). Bokuto shakes his head in defeat and picks the cigarette up from the younger boy’s palm, holding it in front of his tightly shut mouth.  
  
“That’s a secret.”  
  
“Like your first name?” Keiji teases, but lets Bokuto place the cigarette between his lips. Their eyes meet when Bokuto has gotten the lighter to work again, and he brings the flame closer. For a moment he looks perplexed and almost serious, and Keiji isn’t sure is it the fire or their sudden proximity that makes his face all hot out of nowhere.  
  
Then the taste of smoke is heavy on Keiji’s tongue, and Bokuto smiles again. “Not as big as that, no.”  
  
After a couple of attempts that end in Keiji coughing so hard his eyes start to water, he gets the hang of what Bokuto is trying to teach to him (his choice of words isn’t always the best, and Keiji can’t help but laugh at his demonstrations). Bokuto tells him he doesn’t have to smoke whatever he has put in the cigarette - that it might be dangerous, even - but Keiji finds the aftertaste fascinating.  
  
He knows smoking whatever Bokuto had gotten for him is bad when he can’t contain his laughter anymore, and heavy relaxedness seeps into his bones. It’s the first time since his father’s death that Keiji can enjoy himself without having to cage away the memories that are trying to make him lose his mind, and when Bokuto gives him another cigarette and starts the car, Keiji asks him where has he been all these years.  
  
“You’re a mysterious one, Keiji,” Bokuto says with a laugh, heading to the highway. “Smart, and mysterious.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah. You kind of remind me of my best friend.” Keiji takes a look at Bokuto from the corner of his eye, curious – he didn’t even know Bokuto had a best friend. Probably because he seems to be best friends with everyone he meets.  
  
“Is that so?”  
  
Bokuto nods, a soft smile on his lips. “Tetsu’s like, _mad_ smart. But he also knows how to have fun, you know? We do a lot of dumb shit together, but in the end it’s always him who’s the voice of reason. He’s cool, like, a couple days ago he was walking home from school and saved this kid from jumping off a bridge! Can you believe? You’d get along with him well, I think. We have this dream that someday we’ll start a band and we’ll tour around the country and just enjoy ourselves.”  
  
“I didn’t know you can play.” Bokuto did have an acoustic guitar in his bedroom, but Keiji had always thought it was just a thing he had picked up from somewhere (like most of the things Bokuto called his own).  
  
“I can! Next time when you come over, I’ll play something to you,” Bokuto says and flashes a happy grin to Keiji. Keiji answers to it by blowing smoke to his direction, and they both laugh.  
  
“So sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, is that the plan?”  
  
“Yes and no. Rock’n’roll, hell yeah, but mostly I just want to have fun. Tetsu has school right now, and we don’t see often. He wants to finish school, and I respect him for that. But after he’s free… man, we’re gonna have so much fun.”  
  
“Why aren’t you at school?” Keiji knows he’s being rude, but he has momentarily lost the ability to keep his thoughts to himself. However, Bokuto doesn’t seem to be offended by his question.  
  
“Didn’t get in anywhere after high school. I tried working at this car rental place, but that just wasn’t for me.”  
  
“So you thought stealing the cars would be more fun?”  
  
Bokuto laughs, amused and loud. The sound gives Keiji a better high than any drug ever could. “Nope, that’s something I’ve been doing longer than I remember.”  
  
+++  
  
Keiji is seventeen years and eight months old when he realizes why the boy who’s always rude to him is so familiar.  
  
“I didn’t know you even were here, Akaashi.” Keiji raises his eyes and is met with a gaze full of gold and copper. The boy is carrying a bottle of beer that’s only half-full, his bleached hair combed back. He leans against the door frame, trying to come off as relaxed and cool. Keiji can see the tension in his shoulders.  
  
“I’m not a fan of crowds,” Keiji says, truthfully. He was on his way to leave before the boy interrupted him, anyway.  
  
“Hm,” the boy says and empties his bottle. He carefully places it on the floor and steps inside the small spare bathroom (currently used to store the drinks that couldn’t fit in the fridge or the freezer downstairs), pulling the door close behind himself as if it was an accident. Keiji’s shoulders tense, too. “Bokuto’s not here, is he?”  
  
“He wasn’t invited,” Keiji says. It’s a classmate’s birthday party, and Keiji isn’t sure why the boy is there – he’s older than Keiji is, and definitely doesn’t go to the same school.  
  
They might have other mutual friends than Bokuto, though – Tokyo isn’t that big.  
  
“That hasn’t stopped him from coming before.”  
  
“Why do you think I know why he is or isn’t somewhere?” Keiji hisses out and closes the window he stood right under to have a smoke. He doesn’t smoke –- unless the cigarettes are a gift from Bokuto – but he’s a little bit drunk, and the man who lives with him and his mother got angry the night before: Keiji has aching bruises all around his body because this time he decided to stand between his mother and the man.  
  
Everything happening inside that house used to make him scared; now it only makes him mad.  
  
“Aren’t you two, like, a thing or something?” the expression on the boy’s face is honestly surprised, and Keiji catches himself thinking how he wants to say _yes_.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Interesting.” Keiji doesn’t know what’s so interesting, but instead of asking he shrugs and tries to get to the door. When he reaches for the handle, the boy grabs his wrist.  
  
“Wait a second, Akaashi.”  
  
“What do you want?” Keiji sounds angry and frustrated, but actually he’s scared. Usually when people have touched him against his own will, he has gotten hurt. He tries to calm his nerves down by thinking how he just reacted on pure instinct, that there’s nothing to be scared of.  
  
“Well,” the boy says and tightens his grip around Keiji’s wrist. “I think there’s something you should know about Bokuto.” He’s stronger than Keiji is, and easily forces him to take a couple steps back so they’re facing each other.  
  
“And I think I can get to know people on my own, thank you,” Keiji says, his voice barely a whisper (but not from self-confidence and pride, just from the fear that’s climbing up his spine and spreading in his lungs, making it hard to breathe).  
  
Keiji looks up at the boy, meets his eyes even though the voice of reason inside his head is telling him not to, and realizes the boy has Bokuto’s eyes.  
  
But then again, they’re _not_ Bokuto’s eyes – the color is similar, gold and swirls of copper mixed together, and the way they look at Keiji is the same: adoration, excitement and a hint of vulnerability. But the boy’s eyes lack Bokuto’s warmth and sincerity; his child-like joy and happiness are replaced by cold, overwhelming strength and poison. Keiji thinks that the boy probably used to be like Bokuto, but then something happened.  
  
He has a bad feeling that that _something_ was Bokuto.  
  
“Do whatever you want, pretty boy, but don’t let that idiot get in your head. He’s going to use you, and then leave. Don’t trust him.”  
  
“Like you did?” Keiji sees from the boy’s body language that he wants to punch him, but manages to fight against the urge. He lets out a cold, humourless laugh.  
  
“Yes, maybe I did. But I’m warning you, Akaashi. Choose the people you let in your life carefully.”  
  
“You want me to pick _you_ instead of Bokuto, don’t you?” Throughout the years, Keiji has gotten really good at reading people, and there’s desperation in the way the boy looks at him (desperation that’s nowhere to be seen in Bokuto’s eyes when he looks at Keiji, probably because it’s in Keiji’s eyes every time he looks at Bokuto).  
  
Another laugh, and then the boy pushes Keiji against the cold tile wall, stepping so close Keiji can feel the boy’s words against his skin. “I don’t need you picking me, pretty boy. I can take you whenever I want.”  
  
Keiji tries to get the boy let go of his wrist, but he’s too weak in front of the boy’s unwavering power. He uses that power to turn Keiji around and press his chest to the wall. When Keiji is about to tell him off, he places his other hand on top of Keiji’s mouth.  
  
“Easy, now,” he snickers into Keiji’s ear, and the fear streaming in his bloodstream turns into pure panic.  
  
(Keiji isn’t particularly good with panic. He’s never been a fighter: when his father shot himself in front of Keiji and his mom, Keiji couldn’t move from his seat at the kitchen table. He stared at his father’s lifeless body on the floor, his mother’s screams and sobs echoing in his eardrums, and he didn’t stand up even when the house got filled with paramedics and policemen.  
  
After the incident, Keiji didn’t say a word in four weeks. He overheard a doctor telling his mother that he was suffering from a trauma, that he might speak _never_ again, and through that all he could focus on nothing but the blood that had dyed the kitchen floor red.  
  
When he tried to scrub it clean, the blood staining his dark school pants, the floor had been cold to touch.)  
  
The bathroom’s tile wall is cold and clammy under Keiji’s hands that find nothing to hold onto despite his frantic search. He tried to scream for help, he tried to scream the boy off, but the boy told him no one could hear him over the booming music taking over the rest of his house.  
  
After hearing that he stops screaming, and the boy takes away the hand he held over his mouth and slides it between their bodies. Keiji hears how the boy unzips his pants, and then the hand is tugging down Keiji’s jeans. He tries to push the boy’s hands away from him, but the boy is stronger: he easily holds Keiji still, trapped between his bigger body and the cold wall, and for the first time in years Keiji feels like crying.  
  
He wants to tell the boy he has never done it before. Maybe ask him to take it slow and gentle if he absolutely needs to do this.  
  
He doesn’t get his mouth open, and it hurts. Keiji tries to distract himself by digging angry-red crescent moons into his palms with his own nails, and biting his bottom lip so hard he ends up tasting iron. After a while the boy wraps the fingers of one hand around Keiji’s neck – just for extra support, the hold not tight enough to choke – and Keiji tries to focus on the feeling instead of the pain and the sounds.  
  
The sounds are the worst. It’s probably because of the bathroom, but the boy’s grunts and loud sighs of pleasure seem to endlessly bounce off the tile walls. They become a sickening cacophony adding to the nauseous feeling that has started to form in the bottom of Keiji’s stomach. Over and over again he tries to block them out, but he fails every time.  
  
Keiji doesn’t know how long it takes from the boy to come inside him - what’s happening was too much for his mind, and it tried to run away by shutting off completely (a part of it remembers a doctor telling his mother _“traumatic events might be too much for the brain, and it kind of switches off”_ during one of their therapy sessions back when Keiji still didn’t talk). The boy pants heavily right next to his ear, one shaky hand around his throat and another pinning his left wrist against the cold, clammy wall.  
  
When the boy pulls out of him and lets go, Keiji’s feet refuse to hold his weight. He feels like that time when he had a high fever: his entire body is covered in cold sweat, he’s trembling uncontrollably, and he wants to throw up.  
  
A sound of the boy zipping up his pants echoes in the bathroom, followed by his amused laugh. “Pretty boy makes a pretty slut, I see. Bokuto’s gonna be happy when he finds out about that. He has always been keen on filthy things.”  
  
The boy slams the bathroom door shut behind himself, the loud sound taking over the small space, pressing Keiji more violently against the cold floor.  
  
+  
  
It’s way past midnight, and when Bokuto opens his front door he’s wearing a loose T-shirt and boxer shorts. Keiji is quick to apologize for waking him up, but Bokuto doesn’t seem to hear him.  
  
“Has something happened?”  
  
“Can I use your shower?” Keiji knows he can’t go home smelling of cheap booze, smoke and sex. He saw himself in the bathroom mirror before he left the party, and he had looked sick: black, messy hair and dark circles under his eyes, his skin so pale it looked paper-thin. He understands why Bokuto has a deep, worried frown on his face when he lets Keiji in, and Keiji wants to chase that expression away.  
  
“Sure. I’ll get you some clean clothes, okay?”  
  
“You don’t have to. It’s– I’m fine, really. You can go back to sleep.”  
  
“I’ll leave them behind the door. There’s clean towels in the cupboard next to the sink.”  
  
“Bokuto, you don’t have to–”  
  
“Keiji.” He stops at the words, and looks up. He meets warm, golden eyes and a soothing smile. “Green’s your favorite tea, right?”  
  
Keiji isn’t sure how long he spends in the shower, the scalding hot water pouring over him getting mixed with salty tears falling on his cheeks. When he steps out of the shower he catches a glimpse of himself from the fogged up mirror above the sink, and he needs to go back and scrub his skin pink, because the feeling of being dirty has stained his every cell.  
  
A part of him doesn’t want to put on the soft sweater Bokuto has picked out for him, but at least it’s _clean_ and doesn’t smell like the boy (instead it smells like flowery laundry detergent and a little bit like Bokuto, and Keiji wants to drown in that particular scent).  
  
There’s two steaming hot cups of green tea on the table when Keiji walks in the kitchen, and the harsh yellow lighting creates deep shadows on Bokuto’s face when he looks at Keiji. Their eyes meet and Keiji is reminded of the boy – the pain, the words, the humiliation – and he needs to curl his hands into fists to hide their shaking. However, Bokuto is observant (he seems like an airhead and acts like a prankster, and those sides of him often hide the fact that he has been through a lot – and definitely more than Keiji knows of), and he takes a step closer and brushes his fingertips over the knuckles of Keiji’s right hand.  
  
“Can I?” he asks, and Keiji just nods because he doesn’t want Bokuto to hear his voice giving in under the tears he tries to swallow down.  
  
Bokuto wraps his arms loosely around Keiji and pulls him against his chest, massaging the back of his neck when the stagnant night air in the kitchen is broken by a choked sob. Keiji hides his face in the junction of Bokuto’s neck and shoulder, breathing in his scent, his hands full of the soft fabric of Bokuto’s nightshirt.  
  
“Do you think I’m filthy?” Keiji whispers, and the way Bokuto’s body tenses for a second actually scares him. He lets him pull back, and it’s the first time Keiji has ever let someone see him cry.  
  
“Keiji. There’s nothing filthy in you, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You’re beautiful, so damn beautiful,” Bokuto says, his thumbs catching the tears rolling down Keiji’s cheeks. “Just gorgeous.”  
  
+++  
  
Keiji is seventeen years and 364 days old, and he’s sitting on the hood of another stolen car when Bokuto wraps an extra scarf around his neck because “Keiji, it’s getting cold, and I don’t want you to get sick because of me”. He laughs and rolls his eyes, and doesn’t miss how his little chuckle makes Bokuto’s face shine brighter than the stars twinkling above them combined.  
  
“Okay,” Bokuto says as he settles next to Keiji, crossing his legs and clearing his throat. “You recognize Big Dipper, right? It’s right there. Close to it is Little Dipper, can you see it? They look the same.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Great. The really bright one in Little Dipper is Polaris.”  
  
“That one?”  
  
“Yes, exactly. And between Big Dipper and Little Dipper there’s this long string –- see, there – that ends in a rectangle shape. Can you see it?”  
  
“No.” Bokuto takes Keiji’s hand with a shake of his head, and together they find the constellation he’s talking about. “Oh, yes, now I see it.”  
  
“That’s called Draco.”  
  
“Wow,” Keiji says silently, stunned. He lowers his hand, but doesn’t try to shake the hand on top of it away. Under his palm the hood of the car is still warm, the engine slowly cooling down after the long drive they took from the city to the countryside where the streetlights can’t hide the stars. “They’re all beautiful.”  
  
“Yeah,” Bokuto lets out a small, happy laugh. He doesn’t move his hand away, either. “Gorgeous.”  
  
The word makes Keiji blink and move his eyes from the constellations to the boy next to him. Bokuto isn’t looking up, admiring the stars – instead his eyes are studying Keiji, a shy excitement on his face. Keiji isn’t sure does he look like that because of the stars, because of his company, or maybe because of both.  
  
It makes him smile, nevertheless.  
  
Bokuto’s fingertips are cold when they touch the side of Keiji’s face, but his lips are warm to kiss. They’re both smiling, which makes everything a lot sillier and totally different than what Keiji thought his first kiss would be like. Bokuto tastes a little bit like cinnamon, and how seeing a field full of sunflowers would feel like, and _hope_.  
  
(Hope as in having a good night’s sleep without a single nightmare; or letting Bokuto undress him and show him how intimacy is supposed to feel like, on top of soft sheets instead of against a cold tile wall; or sitting on the passenger seat of another stolen car, smoking weed and holding hands with Bokuto as they speed down another highway, leaving the city knowing their dark pasts behind them.)  
  
“Koutarou,” Bokuto says when they part, his voice unwavering, and it takes a moment for Keiji to put the pieces together. When he does, he smiles.  
  
“Koutarou,” he whispers, as if the name was a great treasure that needs to be protected. It fits perfectly, Keiji thinks, just like the smiling lips pressing against his do.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](http://sleepyams.tumblr.com/)


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